Issuepedia:Wacky Award

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Awards

2008-05-05 Expelled: No Wizardry Allowed

Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes (I can't believe it's not butter), Florida, has dismissed a substitute teacher on a charge of "wizardry".

Tip to the Principal or the school board, or whoever made this brain-dead decision: Harry Potter was fiction, guys. "Wizardry" doesn't really exist. (And most of the wizards in the HP series were a hell of a lot more moral than the Christians who seem to despise it, but that's a separate issue.)

Commentary: Pharyngula

2007-11-28 Sesame Street Not Intended for Children

• 2007-11-18 Sweeping the Clouds Away: “According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, Sesame Street: Old School is adults-only: "These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child."”

This edition of the Wacky Award goes to what is ostensibly the liberal left, though they are sounding less and less liberal and more and more like Queen Victoria or Mary Whitehouse.

In recent years, the children's television show Sesame Street has committed a number of travesties:

• Separating Muppet characters Bert and Ernie because of the idea that their cohabitation meant they must be gay
  • the whole Ernie and Bert are gay thing is particularly heinous, and would deserve its own Wacky Award if it were happening today
• Killing the hilarious "Alistair Cookie, Monsterpiece Theater" sketch series -- first by removing the fake pipe which Cookie Monster was using in order to seem more Alistair Cooke-ish (and which he very appropriately ate at the end of the sketch) and later by discontinuing the series altogether.
• Eviscerating Cookie Monster himself by having him expand his diet and renounce his cookie fixation (in 2005)
• De-emphasizing the misanthropic but honest Oscar the Grouch in favor of the abysmally chirpy and substance-free Elmo

Sesame Street executive producer Carol-Lynn Parente has finally broken the camel's back and won the Wacky Award for not only defending these actions but also for labeling the original, un-gutted version of the show as "not intended for children". We aren't sure which parallel universe she comes from, but in this universe, Sesame Street was indeed created specifically for children by an organization called the Children's Television Workshop. Those earlier episodes were in fact beloved by many children, who grew up and wanted to show those episodes to their children, so the current generation wouldn't grow up thinking that Sesame Street The Elmo Show had always been just another Barney.

2007-05-24 Inverse Economic Theory

Today's Wacky Award goes to the oil industry, for their revolutionary invention of Inverse Economic Theory.

In this theory, the following things lead to increased prices in the near term:

• competition from other manufacturers
• increased supply of the product
• reduced investment on new infrastructure

This revolutionary theory allows the oil companies to spin the solution to the problem (i.e. development of alternative fuel and energy sources) as part of the problem (i.e. higher gas prices, standing in for the real problem of oil dependence which they want to avoid reminding anyone about).

We at Issuepedia applaud this new theory, and hope that it will soon be required subject matter at schools throughout the United States, as we work diligently to replace discredited and morally bankrupt liberal-secular theories such as evolution, Mendeleevism, and supply and demand with Biblically-correct alternatives. Praise Jesus. (And Elvis didn't do no drugs, neither.)

News Items:

• 2007-05-24 Oil Industry Says Biofuel Push May Hurt at Pump: "[Oil executives] point to a surprising culprit: uncertainty created by the government’s push to increase the supply of biofuels like ethanol in coming years."
  • Incredible New Claim For Why Gas Prices Are So High: Competition

Discussion

anonymous user 71.120.230.45 said: I know this is supposed to be funny but what is the connection between Elvis, Jesus and the Bible, and the Oil Industry? Are you implying that the same people who back the oil industry also follow Jesus and believe/idolize Elvis and use poor grammar? Also, isn't supply and demand an aspect of capitalism, commonly espoused by both US "liberals" and "conservatives". As I understand things, it is a little more strictly followed by the conservatives as the liberals are often in favor of wealth redistribution and public regulation of prices and wages over market forces of supply and demand, but I am sure both ideologies vary from strict supply and demand in some aspects. I very much doubt that either liberals or conservatives are fond of the prices at the pump. Neither side is about to start indoctrinating our children with oil industry rhetoric. What is and isn't taught in school seems hardly the subject of this article, let alone whether the schools favor liberal or conservative doctrines. I suppose I could hunt around here for the correct page to address that topic. Woozle replies: Woozle replied: The Elvis connection is a reference to an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! TV show about the Bible. I realized it was a bit oblique when I wrote it, but I also figured that if anyone asked about it I could just link it by way of explanation. It relates to how people can be overly credulous on the subject of messianic figures. The Jesus connection should be more or less obvious: proponents of non-scientific "alternative theories" to evolution, the Big Bang, etc. are overwhelmingly Christian, and the alternatives they propose are either based on the ludicrous idea of the Bible as an historical text (creationism) or are thinly-disguised attempts to expand the range of possibilities only so that the Bible's account can be among the possibilities (intelligent design). Yes, supply-and-demand is a generally accepted principle, independent of party. As is the periodic table. Evolution gets singled out solely because it threatens religious doctrine, and that is the point I'm trying to drive home: it is every bit as well-supported as the other two areas, if not more so. (S&D is not so much an ideology, though, as an observation of how prices behave in a free market, whether or not you like free markets.) I sincerely hope that you are correct about our educational system being safe from oil industry rhetoric. It hasn't been safe from fast-food industry rhetoric (you should see some of the "worksheets" our kids brought home from kindergarten), nor has it yet been made safe from religion-based rhetoric about their being two or more equally valid theories of the origins of life.

2007-05-09 Hate Gays for Jesus

The perpetrators of the events described in "Persecution in the schools", mainly Dick Otterstad and his son Luke, plus supporting cast of the El Dorado County congregation and the 38.8% who voted for Otterstad in the 2004 school board election, are the joint recipients of today's Issuepedia Wacky Award.

• The Otterstads and their group protested against the school system for not allowing t-shirts to be worn in school claiming that homosexuals would go to hell
• The group started up a company, "No Gay Gear", dedicated to producing anti-gay merchandise, in the name of Christian love and tolerance
• In 2004, Otterstad (presumably the elder one) ran for the school board on a platform of abolishing public education. (What was the slogan – "Elect me, and you'll never have to bother voting again!"? Gee, he should meet George W. Bush; they seem to think alike...)
• Another one of his platform issues in that election was abolishing sodomy. At school? Or was it understood that the school district would be seceding from the Union?
• They've dressed up as Santa Claus in Wal-Mart parking lots to warn shoppers about the evils of using "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" – now there's a real threat to civilization!
• They've donned red devil suits to protest the evil "imposition" of gay tolerance at school workshops. Yep, Jesus didn't want no tolerance. Cain't set around figgerin' out who's without sin; we got us some stones to cast, boys!

2007-04-29 Utah Satan resolution

"Utah Co. GOP kills resolution on Satan" (longer report) wins today's Wacky Award, with special honors going to District Chairman Don Larsen, author of both the resolution and one or two prize comments in support of it:

• The Utah County Republican Party killed a resolution asserting Satan's role in illegal immigration and supporting the closure of U.S. borders – not because they realized the ridiculousness of passing a resolution asserting the involvement of a mythical entity, but because too many delegates had gone home by the time the issue came to a vote.
• Don Larsen described the issue as "a behind-the-scenes war being waged on America by big businesses and left-wing extremists". Yep, gotta watch out for those left-wing big-business supporters. We all know how totally into big business the far left is.
• "They're trying to destroy Christian America and install godless order," Larsen said. "We need to close our national borders and protect the United States from destruction by self-invasion." "Christian America" – is that the country George W. Bush is trying to start? But Larsen has a point: invading ourselves might result in a recursive causality loop, destroying the very fabric of space-time – which could be almost as bad as if gay marriage were legalized.
• "Delegate Joe Ferguson agreed, saying undocumented immigrants will never assimilate into American culture." I suppose it would be tasteless and insensitive to challenge Joe's faith in this assertion by bringing up any cold, amoral, anti-family facts which might point to a different conclusion.
• "The devil is involved," Ferguson said. "Marxism is the devil and freedom is in Christ." It wasn't clear from the article whether Satan had actually issued a statement in support of illegal immigration, or whether Ferguson is speaking on the basis of privileged information which, of course, he cannot share due to its sensitive nature. Also, perhaps the founding fathers should be notified that they got it wrong in their attempt to base a free society on rule of/by/for the people instead of rule by following the teachings of Mr. Christ (or whoever can most convincingly claim to have the correct interpretation of those teachings).
• A dissenting conservative, Sen. Howard Stephenson, said he usually agrees with Larsen, but that some of the language in the resolution was divisive and "will just give fodder to the liberal media to beat up on the Republican Party." If anyone knows of any substantial liberal media outlets still remaining in the United States, please check on this and see if they needed this wacko resolution in order to start beating up on the GOP, or if they were able to start the beating-up process using other issues that might have come up in the last 6 years.